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November 03, 2012

A German who volunteered to fight for the Taliban quit after becoming disheartened by the violence and annoyed with the group's macho and drug-taking world.

A German who volunteered to fight for the Taliban quit after becoming disheartened by the violence and annoyed with the group's macho and drug-taking world.

The former fighter also complained of the unhygienic conditions in the war-torn lands of Pakistan's Waziristan province and Afghanistan that left him infected with hepatitis, and which were, in his opinion, "incompatible with the teachings of the Koran".

The unflattering portrayal of life in the Taliban came in a statement made by Thomas U. during his trial in Berlin for involvement in a foreign terrorist group.

The 27-year-old had travelled to Waziristan with his wife in the autumn of 2009 with the intention of freeing the area from the "infidel occupiers" after the couple had converted to Islam.

On encountering their Taliban recruiters they had to hand over £4,000 they had raised in Germany through fraud as a donation to a cause which promised to conquer the whole of Afghanistan in a year.

But Thomas U. soon became disheartened, especially after seeing the remains of three fellow Germans killed by Pakistani army shelling.

"The sight of their badly mangled bodies moved me," he said. "I was scared and I wanted to get out. Waziristan was not what I was looking for." Underlying his dislike of his new life was the Taliban propensity to use drugs, and their "macho" attitude to women. In one case a Taliban fighter went to the German widow of a dead comrade and told her that she would marry him. The proposal was made without any consultation with her, "as if she was just an object" said Thomas U. in his statement.

In September 2010 the couple fled Pakistan and made their way to Turkey, where they were arrested.

Thomas U., has since turned his back on radical Islam and lets his wife "dress anyway she wants".